By Dan Ambrose: Floyd Mayweather Jr. says he’s happy for WBA light welterweight champion Adrien Broner (32-2, 24 KOs) after witnessing him defeat his Mayweather Promotions fighter Ashley Theophane (39-7-1, 11 KOs) by a 9th round knockout last Friday night at the DC Armory in Washington, DC.
After the fight, the 26-year-old Broner called out Mayweather, saying he wants to fight him because of some of the comments that he had made to the media recently. Broner feels that it was wrong that Mayweather chose to talk to the media about his thoughts on his behavior. For that reason, Broner wants to fight Mayweather. However, Mayweather doesn’t appear to be interested in fighting Broner right now.
Mayweather is retired and not planning on returning to the ring in the near future if ever. There’s nothing wrong with Broner wanting to call out Mayweather for a big money fight, because many of the top fighters in the sport have also called Mayweather out as well. However, it’s hard for Mayweather to take Broner seriously because he’s not won a fight against a big name in many years. You can’t call Theophane a big name because he’s a fringe contender and not a highly ranked contender in the 140lb division.
Theophane has stepped it up in his career previously in fights against Pablo Cesar Cano and Danny Garcia, but he was beaten by both of those fighters. In most cases in recent years, Mayweather has faced fighters that were either highly popular or coming off of important wins. Broner doesn’t qualify as someone coming off of a big win because he just beat fringe contender Theophane and before that, he defeated Khabib Allakhverdiev. Before that, Broner was soundly beaten by Shawn Porter last June.
“I’m not really interested in fighting at this time,” Mayweather said to Fighthype when asked about his thoughts on being called out by Adrien Broner last Saturday night. “I was pleased with Adrien’s performance. I seen a lot of mistakes. [He was] Flat-footed, depends on nothing but a wide hook; we can go on and on, but the main thing is he got the victory and that’s good,” said Mayweather.
The flaws that Mayweather saw in Broner’s game have been there since he turned pro eight years ago in 2008, and they don’t appear to be things that will be changed anytime soon. Broner has always been flat-footed since he turned pro, and he’s always throw wide hooks. Broner’s style of fighting appear to be a copy of Mayweather’s. However, Mayweather only sparingly threw wide hooks during his pro career.
When he did throw them, he threw them with a lot of speed that made it difficult for his opponents to block them and counter him. While Mayweather did fight in a flat-footed manner when he was using his shoulder roll defense, he was still capable of moving around the ring to avoiud getting hit by his opponents.
Broner has a large upper body and the short legs of a wrestler. Even if Broner wanted to become more mobile and less flat-footed, I don’t think it would be possible for him to adopt that change to his fighting style. Broner has too much of a wrestler’s body for him to ever change his basic fighting style to become more like Mayweather.
Broner got a controversial stoppage in defeating Theophane last Saturday night in their fight on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike TV. It wouldn’t have been controversial if Broner hadn’t nailed Theophane with a left hand low as he was trying to finish him off in the 9th round after hurting him.
The referee blew the call in stopping the fight when Theophane complained to him about the low blow. It was almost as if the referee wasn’t watching the action close enough to know what was going on in the final sequence of the fight, because it was pretty clear that Broner had nailed Theophane with a left hand that strayed low. Theophane motioned for the referee to do his job, but instead the referee became confused and thought that Theophane wanted the fight to be stopped.
It’s too bad for Broner that he just isn’t at the career point where he’s in the position to seriously call out a star like Mayweather. If Broner was coming off of a win over someone like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Amir Khan, Danny Garcia or Terence Crawford, then he would be in a much better position to call out Mayeather for a fight, but definitely he’s not at that point right now.
Beating Theophane isn’t the type of fight that can catapult Broner into a much bigger fight against Mayweather. If Broner wants a fight against Mayweather in the short term, then he’s probably going to need to do something drastic like beating a big name like Canelo. The problem is Broner doesn’t have the size, power or the speed to beat a guy like Canelo. That would be an easy fight for Canelo. He would have a stationary target to use his 170+ pound bulk to dominate Broner and likely get a knockout.
Besides calling out Mayweather last Friday, Broner also mentioned wanting to fight WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia for a fight. That’s a much more doable fight for Broner than trying to get a fight against Mayweather. It might be a fight that can be put together if their manager Al Haymon is willing to put the fight together.
I’m not sure if Haymon will though, because he would be losing one of his revenue streams if he matched Broner against Garcia. The loser of that fight would likely wind up losing a lot of boxing fans, and it’s hard to say whether they would still be a draw on PBC. Garcia is in a better position right now to absorb a loss than Broner because he’s still undefeated. In the case of Broner, he’s been beaten twice in the last three years. He can’t keep losing if he wants to be seen as a big star in the sport.
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